Sophia Akuffo is the former Chief Justice of Ghana. She received her Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Ghana and qualified as a barrister at the Ghana School of Law. She was trained as a lawyer under Nana Akufo-Addo and received a Master’s Degree in Law from Harvard University. Organizations that she worked at after law school included Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co., Mobil Oil, and Ghana Airways, where she served as Legal Director. She was nominated to the Supreme Court of Ghana in 1995, where she used her rulings to protect the rights of Ghanaian women. In the case of Mensah v. Mensah (2012), it was decided that women had the right to acquire half of all properties gained during the marriage from the divorce. In 2006, she was elected as one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, alongside Justice Kelello Justina Mafoso-Guni.

In 2008, she was appointed as Vice-President of the Court, was re-elected in 2010, and was appointed as the Court’s first female President in 2012. As part of her mandate, Akuffo sought to spread awareness of the Court and what it did across Africa, and she did this through educational outreaches. Akuffo was nominated as Chief Justice in May 2017, and sworn in that same year by President Akufo-Addo, making her Ghana’s 13th Chief Justice and the second successive woman to serve as Chief Justice in the country.
Akuffo retired in 2019 but was appointed to Ghana’s COVID-19 Fund in February 2020. Justice Akuffo has served on the governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute, and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Task-Force. She has also participated in several judicial system reforms, including the implementation of a fast- track court system and revamping of the Ghana Law School.